Undertow
by karebear
Summary: The crashing of the ocean waves is predictable and dangerous, and the water only ever takes things away. Sequel to Any Port in a Storm. Shepard and Kaidan, ME1.


_Taking one step back, trying to pull yourself together_  
_ No matter what you say, nothing you do _  
_ Can hold back the forces on you forever_  
- Ivy, "Undertow"

"I thought you hated the Alliance," Shepard says sharply, cringing at how much harsh suspicion bleeds into the words.

Kaidan looks up, almost but not quite meeting her eyes. She's still standing, and with him wedged into the seat smashed into the cramped rear hold of the MAKO, she towers over him. Jenkins is driving. It's the first time she's been alone with Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko since being posted to the Normandy, and the air is thick with the tension built out of unspoken questions and half-formed expectations.

Kaidan shakes his head slightly and taps his foot up and down in a quick cadence that rings out from the metallic deck. She reaches up to grab one the hand-straps dangling from the transport's ceiling and settles in to wait. She watches without flinching as he draws a deep and careful breath, taking his time blowing it out. He's so damned predictable that for half a second she swears she can smell the salt-laden heaviness of ocean air, and feel crumbling concrete at her back.

"I don't," he finally replies, still guarded, as ever. "I never did. I just..." He shrugs, trailing off, unable or unwilling to tell her what she wants to know. He still won't look at her. He _radiates_ guilt, uncertain hesitation, and a dangerously desperate need for belonging. God, he hasn't changed _at all_, and seeing him here, squirming in front of her, it throws her into a place she doesn't want to be.

_Don't you know these streets are dangerous?_

He'd nodded then, immediately, but she'd already known he hadn't believed her, hadn't _understood_ the way she did. Because he followed her. And she's seen the way he acts on the Normandy: still not hardened to the certainty of death, still the tiniest fraction of hesitation before he accepts her orders, as he weighs possibilities and questions, searches for paths that someone with war in their blood knows there is no time to look for. The weight of a gun in hand has never felt comfortable to him. She remembers the way he used to throw hers back to her as soon as he could get away with it, and she sighs. "You're not a soldier, Kaidan," she insists. "So what are you doing here?"

This time she manages to keep her voice controlled: carefully emotionless. His dark eyes flicker toward hers, soft and searching as he scrambles for the tiniest fragment of something familiar he can latch onto, some hint of the girl she'd been. She holds his gaze and gives him nothing. Janey was a kid without a future who'd reached out to a lost and lonely boy, looked for a hero, wanted a rescue... but that life is long gone now. Commander Jane Shepard, newly assigned XO of the Alliance's newest highly expensive and highly experimental stealth frigate, simply can't afford a lieutenant with an unpredictably explosive temper, the crippling physical and psychological pain common to all L2 biotics, and a known drug habit. She's read his file: he manages to tread an incredibly thin line between court martial and special commendation. While she'd clawed her way to the top of Alliance special forces with record-shattering speed, he'd been promoted only once in nearly ten years, even with his rack of medals.

Kaidan studies her with a confused frown, nibbling on his lower lip as he takes in the relaxed efficiency of her posture, the hard set of her features, the N7 insignia just above her breast. His eyes linger on that, and the corresponding bloodstripe down her right arm, an uncomfortable echo of the tattered strip of cloth that had once advertised her gang affiliation. He meets her eyes again, and she answers with the barest trace of a nod - recognition of their shared history, but nothing more. Kaidan sighs, running his hand across his newly retouched military buzz cut.

"It's a plea bargain," he finally admits. "You damn well know the Alliance doesn't let powerful biotics out of their grasp. Especially not to rot in a cell."

"A plea bargain," she repeats. It sounds like a question, it sounds like _worry_.

Kaidan shifts and leans back against the hard metal bulkhead rumbling with their movement, searching for a comfortable position that doesn't exist in these close confines. "A lot changed after you left, Janey."

"Commander Shepard."

He winces, but recovers quickly and nods. "Right," he concedes, with just a hint of coolness in his voice. "The Reds moved fast and reckless, started expanding, made contacts off-world..."

"And you were part of that?!" she snaps.

After a decade, she bleeds Alliance, loyal to the core. A damn hero.

Even when she was part of that life, she'd known there was a line. Kaidan had known it too.

_A lot changed after you left_.

Damn right.

She's kept tabs on the Reds, discreetly, the Special Forces office has had her slip into the criminal underworld on Earth and a dozen other planets over the years, fitting herself into the old ways to get information from people who'd have shot her on sight if she'd strolled in with a uniform.

She tries to separate her memories of summer nights under dead streetlights from cold analysis. Kaidan Alenko is dangerous, with a cold core of anger and a grudge against both the Alliance military and the turian race. He can keep it controlled most of the time, but she's seen a few things most people haven't; whispers of questions that fill in the grey spaces between the harsh black-and-white notations in his personnel file.

"You're one of those Earth-First terrorists now, is that what you're saying?" she snaps. "The Alliance didn't put a bullet in you only because... what? You've got too much potential to waste?"

"I'm not a terrorist," he demands. After a flickering and hesitant glance in her direction, he adds a hesitant "Commander."

Shepard crosses her arms over her chest and stares him down and acts like a commanding officer. Aloof, apart, with the kind of unblinking scowl that makes everybody nervous. She doesn't have to _act_ to pull it off. He doesn't feel any different than any other soldier. Is that good or bad?

Kaidan continues tapping his foot up and down with slow, deliberate movements, but doesn't look away. "The Alliance believes it, and I can prove it to you if you give me a chance." He sighs; a long, deep mournful sound. The unspoken language of apology and promise, when they touched in the dark, splitting apart and coming together. She was supposed to have left all that behind on Earth. She doesn't know him anymore.

But familiarity stirs in swirling waves inside her body. Inside the MAKO, he's so close that she could touch him by accident. It takes all her concentration not to. He's gotten stronger: more confident, more muscular, even the focused tingle of biotic energy she can feel gathering its potential with his every movement is _brighter_, somehow. He isn't afraid of himself anymore.

"Look, I know you don't owe me anything," he rumbles. The vibrations of his voice surge through her muscles, reflecting in the crunch of the vehicle's wheels on the uneven ground beneath their feet. "I'm not asking for special treatment. They may have had me against the wall, but in the end, I joined up because I wanted to." He shrugs. "There are worse things than being a soldier."

She nods, flipping the gun over in her hands, tracing each of its components with a steady hand. Its cleaner than the one she'd held on the Vancouver streets as a kid, but a similar model. She can feel the ghosts of his hands under hers as she showed him how to pull a trigger. She can hear the echoes of those shots, the rain of broken glass shattering at their feet. "Fuck," she breathes. The words punches into the quiet air. "I don't know if I can do this, Kaidan," she finally admits.

To his credit, he doesn't push for anything more. He spins away from her and drums his fingers against the wall of the MAKO, waiting to touch the ground.

It feels like she's still waiting, sometimes.

Eden Prime was a fucking disaster. They'd drifted apart as soon as the MAKO spilled them out into open air, and neither one was fully alert when Corporal Jenkins, young and eager and stupid and charging ahead, found himself torn apart before even getting out a warning. She'd pushed her mind away from the rotting husks of once-human bodies, focused on the mission. She knows she seems callous to everyone around her, and she also knew that Kaidan saw right through that. She could feel his eyes cutting through her, laser-sharp. It scared her how easily she'd fallen right into trusting him at her back. Panic claws under her ribcage at the knowledge that it's so easy for her to slip back into that old life. Kaidan does not keep her safe. He's just another soldier. There is nothing between them but old, dangerous memories.

Old, dangerous memories are all she has.

Flickering images and echoing screams, a litany of terror and destruction swirl in her dreams, broken whispers in a dead language. The Prothean beacon stabs like a needle into her brain, bringing with it a nameless, half-understood _inevitably_. The death of civilization itself hangs on every breath she takes. The weight of it is heavy on her chest.

After several months, she's starting to crumple beneath it.

She feels the familiar pressure of Kaidan's fingers against her body, tapping coded patterns. She relaxes, breathing in time with the beat of his heart, shaking free of the haunting dreams that keep her awake.

"Are you sure you're okay, Commander?" he asks softly. He fumbles for a couple of protein bars and hands her one. She accepts it with a slight nod. She doesn't ask him what he's doing here while everyone else is sleeping. She doesn't push him away. His hand darts and skips over her body. She shivers and curls away from his smoldering gaze. "Kaidan, there are regs now. That life..."

He inhales sharply, and she feels a tense burst of coiled power for a brief moment before he quashes it "I know," he replies, with a heavy breath. The weight of his touch disappears, and he goes back to fiddling with the tricky console, still as bad at hiding his feelings now as he ever was. "Don't worry, ma'am. I don't make a habit of disrupting the chain of command."

She grabs his hand before she can stop herself, pulling him close to her, kissing him. The warmth of his body pressed up against hers is overwhelming. He smells like snow and dust and the spicy aftermath of Sand, she can taste the coffee on his breath. She closes her eyes and curls against his chest and lets her finger trail along the bare skin of his forearm where the short sleeves of his off-duty jumpsuit can't block her touch. He responds with strong arms around her waist. His lips crush hers, strong and certain. She can feel the tingle of biotic energy darting between them. Her hand drifts lower, fumbling for his pants. She's breathing hard, blushing, when he shoves her away. She stumbles, confused by his rejection, lost for just a moment too long, overwhelmed. She misses this, she misses _him_. Not Lieutenant Alenko, but _Kaidan_. She closes her eyes and sees dark and dirty concrete, a stained mattress, an ancient ski jacket from some charity dumpster. Only the gun in her hand feels the same. Kaidan rests his hand against her cheek, looks into her eyes, and shakes his head. "Janey... We _can't_."

She nods, slowly, shoving herself away from him and not looking back.

They didn't go out of their way to avoid each other after that, not exactly, but their conversations were always clipped and professional and discussed nothing old or real.

She lays awake at night and doesn't go down the mess hall, she convinces herself that this is the way she wants it. She buries herself in the work of command, and pretends that Lieutenant Alenko is just another soldier, just another asset, and an unpredictable one at that.

It gets easier and harder. Saren gets closer and farther away, her focus narrows. Chasing down the rogue Spectre becomes an obsession. His voice calls to her through the nightmares. When the Council tells her "Virmire," nothing else seems important.

The ocean waves crash onto the sand and lap over her feet. She splashes through the shallow water in armored boots, focused solely on making it through the next minute. Her fingers pull the trigger of the Avenger in her hand with the reflexes that were born on the corner. Thunder roars in her ears as those staccato bursts fire, dropping geth that dim and die as shattered pieces of their synthetic bodies spin away, webs of electricity crackling across the empty shells. Voices chatter in her ear; the high-pitched, frantic commands of the Salarian team, and Ashley's more controlled status updates. Together, they propel her forward. She slides along the shadowed edge of the research facility, settling into the familiar rhythm of battle. Not calm, not exactly, but there is a sort of comfort. She understands what needs to be done. Her senses warp, time seems to slow. Her mind clicks and whirs separately from her body, analyzing field reports and the scans coming in from her HUD. Biotic potential floods her veins. She ducks behind a thick metal crate and finds her target. With careful, steady aim, she fires slow and powerful reinforced rounds at the weak point of the AA gun until its dangerous, chattering pulses die. Smoke billows up from the twisted metal. One step at a time, one shot at a time, one more enemy contact flashing red and going dark. Slow and steady progress toward the goal.

Joker's reassuring voice sings over her radio, and the Normandy sweeps in low over her head. The waves crash over her feet, keeping rhythmic time, like the ticking of a bomb.

She can feel Kaidan's eyes on her for a brief flickering second before he settles in to work, setting triggers and timers with careful precision. Worry begins to pound in her veins, building with the crashing surf. Ashley should be here by now. She should be safe. The beach is calm, and empty. She thumbs the radio and orders the chief back to the RV point, still feeling confident, because the Normandy is close, and Kaidan's close, and working together is familiar and easy now, she watches him as his fingers move deftly over wires and triggers and the unseen ticking clock. There's still time enough.

"No good, Commander," Ashley replies sharply. "They've sent reinforcements to the AA tower. We're taking heavy fire."

Shepard freezes at Ashley's words. The calm abandons her, flooding out with a crashing wave of panic.

"Go get her, Commander," Kaidan orders immediately, one clear voice cutting over the rhythm of the waves. She nods. No question. No one gets left behind.

She grabs Garrus and Wrex and pushes forward, up the too-slow elevator, up until she staggers out onto a narrow ledge where the wind is so strong that it slams her against the nearest barrier. From this high the water looks calm. She cannot pick Kaidan out from among the crowd of armored bodies tromping through the swirling pool around their nuclear device. There is still time. No one gets left behind.

She believes it until she feels the unsettling darkness of a shadow passing overhead, the insectoid outline of a geth dropship. Reinforcements. "There's geth dropping in all over the place!" Kaidan screams over the radio.

_We told them to send a fleet_.

It had bothered her, after a while, to be so flatly rejected by the Salarian team on the ground. Her Spectre status at least should've earned some of their respect. Now she wishes she did have a fleet. The truth is she is not here to fight, only to run away. They will not win here.

Insistent voices scream at her, fighting. She can't make this call. She _can't_ make this call. She swallows hard. "Can you hold them off?"

"Negative, Commander. I... don't think so." She hears the hesitation in his voice, even through the choppy spits of static and white noise that spark through the radio feed.

_"Lieutenant, I'm coming for you. Hold the line."_

She'd huddled behind the makeshift barricade, fumbling with the radio at her ear with one hand as the other held tight to her gun: her personal sidearm, familiar and comfortable and the only thing within reach when the batarians landed.

Her muscles spasmed with exhaustion, the stims pumping through her system were the only thing keeping her on her feet. Her eyes felt gritty, her head pounded and her hands shook and dark spots clouded her vision. She ducked into a tight ball as an explosive shell tore apart the wall that used to be standing between her and the street.

"Dammit! Somebody cover that breach!" She screamed into the emptiness, but if there was anyone left to hear her, they didn't reply.

She threw out her hand and somehow managed to find enough energy to create a flickering barrier. Not strong enough. But the blue-light glow reflected back in the eyes of the dark-skinned little boy crouched at her feet; one of the civvies with nowhere else to go, no protection except for whatever she managed to create. She cursed again and squeezed the trigger on her pistol, discharging bullets into the open air, not bothering to check if any hit their targets. She emptied a clip and slammed in another one and tried not to think about how quickly she wasted what little ammunition remained. Her fingers scrabbled for more, and hit nothing. Her eyes met the kid's once more, as the radio hissed and screeched. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she flexed her fingers and begged her already overtaxed biotic amp not to fail, not to fall. Not yet.

She'd managed on Elysium. Nobody had given up on her, despite the odds, and she'd held out.

"Kaidan, do you hear me? I'm coming for you!"

The radio crackles and bleeds, but she hears his voice so clearly it's like the cut of a knife. "I think we both know that isn't going to happen."

She swears she can hear the louder beeping of the bomb's final countdown coming through her radio.

Ashley has to force her onto the Normandy when it arrives.

The insistent crashing of the ocean waves fade as the ship leaves the planet behind, leaves _Kaidan _behind, despite all the promises they'd never made. _He was supposed to stay alive!_ She'd trusted him at least that much, because she'd damned well known she couldn't trust herself. She'd told him he wasn't a soldier, but he'd followed all the rules and pushed her away. He put the mission first. No matter what. _Damn him_.

The bomb explodes with silent ferocity, and she shatters along with it. The mushroom cloud chases her, reaching its tentacles up, but not far enough to pull her back down. The fallout vents harmlessly into the atmosphere of the idyllic paradise of the planet that became hell.

She looks for someone else to reach out to, but everyone has disappeared, and Kaidan's absence only makes the emptiness of the crew deck feel even more complete.

Cold tears trail down her cheeks and rage curls up in her stomach. She unleashes a screaming cry and throws everything she has into a violent reaction, a wild burst of energy that slams everything that isn't latched down crashing against far away bulkheads, leaving nothing but sparking wreckage. She does it again and again until she's spent, and it's still not enough.

Around her, The Normandy is quiet. It's _always _quiet. It's a stealth ship running silent, but the steady subharmonic thrum of the engine used to be comforting. She'd _liked _the quiet: it felt like a luxury after a lifetime of pulsing bass woofers so loud she could hear it in her heartbeat, constant police sirens, a metal and concrete world where everybody screamed. Now it feels like a lie, or a cruel taunt. She sits in the mess, staring at the still-flickering console that Kaidan had spent so many hours failing to repair. Its presence mocks her. It flashes a blindingly bright standby light stabbing through the darkened room, only highlighting the emptiness she feels. She scowls at it. The light blinks in its unsteady rhythm, uncaring, as memories rake through her brain with sharp claws.

She'd found him in a darkened alley late at night, she was already marked as someone who lived a different kind of life than the one he deserved. He'd never belonged in the dangerous places. She wraps her arms tightly around her knees and shivers, feeling the ghost of cold Canadian winters and the salt of tears and splashing ocean water on her lips. She can't shake the image of his trusting smile, the echo of his arms wrapped tight around her body. The memories crash over her, loud and unceasing, dragging her down into the undertow.

"Dammit, Kaidan," she whispers, her words echoing back from the empty walls. "You were never supposed to follow me."

* * *

**Author's Note:** I want to thank everyone who read "Any Port In A Storm" and asked if there was more to the story. Like you guys, I guess, this particular incarnation of Shepard and Kaidan wormed their way into my brain and wouldn't let go. Maybe this isn't what you were looking for, maybe it is. Give me a shout either way. Like Mass Effect itself, this story will be a trilogy, so look for Part 3 in a week or two if you like what you're seeing. Peace.


End file.
